Weeklybeats is a 52 week long music project in which artists compose and publicly release 1 song a week for the entire year.
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Camelopardus

By Ashen Simian on July 19, 2020 8:31 pm

got a Roland D20 very cheaply. It is a third one for me! I have always sold them but somehow I regularly seem to come accross one for a price I can´t resist smile. It is not at all very desirable synth, because the presets are perhaps some of the most dated and boring 80´s sounds you can get. But years ago I learned to program it (not very easy, to be honest) and once again I got one and programmed new sounds for it. The process slowly came back to me, and it has its own strange logic, which has to be understood properly.



So here´s a shortish track with analog stuff doing the background sequences and beats and all the real time stuff (pads, melodies,solos, bells, etc) is the pure, plastic sound of a Roland D20...

I don't know if it's the programming or what but you've managed to get some nice sounds out of the synth.  It doesn't sound overly cheesy or dated to my ears at all.

I'm digging the textures a lot. Goes to show you that a good modern programmer can really breathe new life into an old relic. The "plastic" quality is coming across as presence and clarity. Great work.

CosmicCairns wrote:

I don't know if it's the programming or what but you've managed to get some nice sounds out of the synth.  It doesn't sound overly cheesy or dated to my ears at all.

license wrote:

I'm digging the textures a lot. Goes to show you that a good modern programmer can really breathe new life into an old relic. The "plastic" quality is coming across as presence and clarity. Great work.

Thanks guys! This was a very fast mix late in the Sunday evening to meet the deadline, so there's a lot of loose ends. Roland d20 has a sound that is not so far from the sound blaster general midi synth from the days of pentium. So it really needs some programmin, before one gets interesting results from it.

Nice.

Devieus wrote:

Nice.

Thanks, I probably will rework this one day...it has some potential, which is not fully exploited with this mix.

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